The ongoing demise of the old journalistic hegemony.

 

One of the most interesting sidebar stories to come out of the Democratic National Convention last month -- to me, at least -- was about complaints from mainstream journalists that they were kind of given short shrift this year. In their view, the Harris campaign gave preference to social media influencers: meeting with them separately; giving them opportunities for access to the candidates at the same time that mainstream outlets were complaining that the candidates hadn't given any interviews yet; and so on.

Asawin Suebsang covered the convention for Rolling Stone, and he wrote about this kerfuffle last week: 

Much of what I witnessed and heard about during my time in Chicago reinforced my preexisting beliefs that far too many so-called elite members of my profession — national political media scribes who fancy themselves as speaking truth to power, but more often just speak words to financially destructive Google algorithms — are mollycoddled hogs who are doing everything they can to fail to meet the enormity of this moment.

"There were times," he goes on, "I thought I had been teleported back to 2010, when we as an industry were debating how to treat bloggers." And he relates how "multi-lanyard-wearing, sweat-flecked envoys of the U.S. media elite berat[ed] the lowest-level convention volunteers to let them into their seats at once" when security cut off access to the press section due to overcrowding on Thursday night: 

I would be naming names at this point, if I could tell you with certainty who any of these people were, other than the fact that their respective demeanors suggested that they were accustomed to bellowing: "Do you know who I am?"

All this, he says, in an atmosphere where "much of the mainstream political press has been (correctly) programming its audience to believe this year's race is not a normal presidential election, and then too many in that media elite get upset when the public points out that they're covering it like a normal presidential election...".

Amen, brother, amen.

Alert hearth/myth readers know of my journalistic background, and of how I've been gradually coming around to the realization that the business has changed radically since I last sat before a microphone to deliver the news. I mean, I knew the business was changing; that's a big reason why I got out. But the coverage of Donald Trump from 2015 on has made it abundantly clear to me that journalists now see themselves as stars first, deliverers of eyeballs to advertisers and ad dollars to shareholders second, and purveyors of truth third, if at all. Here we are, at another inflection point in the history of our country -- the third election in a row in which democracy is threatened with extinction in the United States -- and these people in my previous profession are all butthurt about their privilege.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that the Harris campaign is stepping around them to get its message out. Political influencers command huge audiences, and they're inclined to give favorable coverage to the campaign -- unlike the mainstream folks, who call it hard-hitting journalism when they fall for every made-up controversy promulgated by the other side.

About that: I saw a comment not long ago, although I don't remember where now, from someone in the news business who was asked why journalists aren't talking about Trump's age and obvious decline, the way they did President Biden's. The newsperson's answer? The Democrats have to make an issue of it first -- then they'll cover it.

That's utter bullshit. In no universe ever has a real journalist passed up a story because nobody else was talking about it.

I'm appalled at the state of political journalism today. C'mon, you guys -- do better. Our nation's continued existence -- as well as your continued relevance -- depend on it.

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These moments of bloggy journalistic exhortation have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And be sure to vote!

The demise of my sleeper sofa.

When did furniture become so cheaply built?

When I retired from the big DC law firm in 2020, the firm graciously offered to buy me anything I wanted, up to a certain price point. I opted for a full-size sleeper sofa. I figured it would be a great way to have both seating in the new place in Santa Fe and sleeping accommodations for overnight guests. Plus a full-size sofa would fit best in the 500-square-foot apartment I was getting. Genius, right?

Here's the sofa I asked for:

Stolen from Wayfair's website

Here's the sofa I got (I bought the throw pillows just recently): 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

You'll note that it has three sections across the back, not two. That's because what they sent me is a queen-size sleeper. It pretty much dominated the living room of that little apartment. It fits better in the condo -- but that has become a moot point since this happened a couple of weeks ago:

Lynne Cantwell 2024

See that little stubby piece of metal sticking up at the bottom of the picture? It was once welded to the pipe that I'm holding. The bed part still works fine; the sofa part, not so much. 

The two-by-four is part of my attempt to support that loose pipe so that the weld on the other side doesn't also break. It's working about as well as you'd expect.

The sad thing is that the sofa was actually pretty comfy. That's unusual for a sleeper, in my experience, and it runs counter to a recent trend that consumers have complained about: reasonably-priced sofas that look good online but are super uncomfortable once you receive them. I could blame the pandemic for my troubles -- I did take delivery of the sofa in the middle of 2020 -- but it turns out that people had been complaining about the quality of new furniture for years before the supply chain broke. 

What's the culprit? Cheap imported furniture, which caused sales of US-made furniture to crater, causing those manufacturers to lay off their workers and sell out to hedge funds -- which have done what they've done to every other part of the manufacturing sector they could get their hands on. That's how you get the Broyhill name attached to crappily made furniture sold exclusively by Big Lots. The made-in-the-US furniture companies that have survived, according to the article at the link above, are building much more expensive products for affluent customers who can afford to hire interior designers to do their shopping for them.

As for the rest of us, it might be worth haunting thrift and consignment stores for well-made pieces from the past. But who has that kind of time?

If I knew someone with a welding setup, I suppose I could get my sofa repaired -- but I don't. And taking it to someone's shop seems problematic. So I'm biting the bullet and buying a replacement from Apt 2B. The company has good reviews (which, hopefully, they didn't pay for), the furniture is made in the US (they claim), and the mattress will definitely be full-sized. It was three times the price of my retirement gift, but hopefully it will last longer than four years. 

It sucks to have to get a new sofa so soon.

Anyway, I'll report back.

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These moments of bloggy planned obsolescence have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And make sure you're (still) registered to vote!

Native voting is pretty new, actually.

This weekend is the annual Indian Market in Santa Fe. It's huge -- there were 1,000 artists displaying their work this year -- and it was hot and crowded when I went yesterday afternoon. Collectors come from all over the country to see the best in Native American art. The artists come from all over the country, too; I met one who's a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi (which, coincidentally, is Darrell Warren's tribe). (I wish I'd grabbed his business card so I could tell you his name. He tattoos his art onto buffalo skins, which you've got to admit is pretty cool.)

Along with the art, this poster caught my eye: 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

(The phrase is from Reservation Dogs, which ran on FX until last year. The photo is of Zahn McClarnon, who played a cop on the show. He also plays a cop on Dark Winds on AMC.)

It wasn't surprising to see a get-out-the-vote effort at Indian Market; we are in an election year, after all. But then I ducked into the Palace of the Governors in an effort to beat the heat, and I found an exhibit that explained why voting is a really big deal for Native Americans.

Here's the thing: Even though Native tribes were here first, the U.S. government treated their members as foreigners for legal purposes (along with treating them as stupid savages and less than human, but I digress). Birthright citizenship was not extended to Indians. They were allowed to enlist in the armed forces and fight for the United States, but they weren't citizens until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. In that legislation, Congress left it up to individual states to decide whether to allow Native Americans to vote. Here in New Mexico, it took a court ruling to grant them suffrage. 

The case, Trujillo v. Garley, centered on Miguel Trujillo (Isleta Pueblo), a World War II veteran. After returning home from the war, Trujillo tried to register to vote in Valencia County, NM, but the county registrar, Eloy Garley, refused his request because he was an "Indian not taxed" -- a provision in state law that took advantage of a loophole in the U.S. Constitution. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Congress of American Indians, Trujillo sued Garley in federal court in 1948, disputing the state's contention that he did not pay taxes -- and providing receipts. A panel of three U.S. district court judges agreed with Trujillo and ordered the county to register him to vote. For the panel, Judge Orie Phillips wrote: 

[The constitution of New Mexico] says that "Indians not taxed" may not vote, although they possess every other qualification. We are unable to escape the conclusion that, under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, that constitutes a discrimination on the ground of race. Any other citizen, regardless of race, in the State of New Mexico who has not paid one cent of tax of any kind or character, if he possesses the other qualification, may vote. An Indian, and only an Indian, in order to meet the qualifications to vote must have paid a tax. How you can escape the conclusion that makes a requirement with respect to an Indian as a qualification to exercise the elective franchise and does not make that requirement with respect to the member of any race is beyond me.

Two weeks earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had overturned the law in that state that prohibited Native Americans there from registering to vote. 

You'd think that would have been the end of it, but no -- Utah didn't extend the franchise to Native Americans until 1957. And all of these actions only allowed Native men to vote; Native women weren't allowed to register until 1965, when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

(Contrast that with the 15th Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1870, that enfranchised Black men. But I digress.)

Barriers remain, of course. Many reservations are vast, and people have to travel long distances to get to a polling place. In addition, some states require those who register to vote to have a street address, which disenfranchises folks on reservations whose homes don't have street addresses. The New Mexico legislature enacted a law last year that, among other things, allows tribes to designate their tribal offices as a legal street address for members who don't have one.

The issue, as always, is control. The powers-that-be have never been comfortable with granting rights to large groups of people who they have mistreated and who might just vote to turn them out of power. There's evidence that it actually happened in Arizona in the 2020 election: turnout was high on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, and President Biden won the state by about 10,500 votes. 

White folks have had the right to vote in this country for a long, long time. We shouldn't take it for granted. We've recently had a federal right taken away from us and left up to state legislatures to decide whether to grant. (You know which one I mean.) And there's that Project 2025 thing looming. So don't be a shitass -- vote!

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These moments of historical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Check your voter registration early and often!

Curmudgeon's Corner: I love my microwave.

I said I wouldn't do another political post this week, so y'all are stuck with this. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

It has become trendy to dunk on the microwave oven -- or at least that was the sense I got when I was reading all those kitchen renovation articles last year. (I'm done with renovating my kitchen now, so you can stop showing me those, Google, kthx.) The current popular opinion is that a microwave is a big, boxy thing that takes up space on the counter or a big, boxy thing that hangs over the stove where a much more powerful range vent ought to be. People don't know how to use them. This article by Jacob Sweet in The Atlantic last year (sorry for the paywall) says, in part: "Not only are microwaves ugly, but they are not particularly user-friendly", and then talks about the "Potato" button, the "Pizza" button, the "Beverage" button, and the notoriously useless "Popcorn" button. He goes on: "After four years, I'm still not sure whether it's possible to set a cook time at an interval of fewer than 30 seconds; I just press '+30 Sec' repeatedly and watch to make sure nothing explodes."

I mean, he's right about the buttons. But a lot of the rest of his rant could be solved by reading the damned instruction manual. And as for ugly? Are you kidding me? That's like calling your dishwasher ugly! Or your refrigerator!

Although... Hmm. The trend nowadays in high-end kitchens is to hide dishwashers and fridges behind paneling to match the cabinetry. I begin to see where this is going.

Back in the mid 1980s, my in-laws gave us a microwave as a wedding gift. You want to talk about big, boxy and ugly? That thing was so gigantic that it needed its own cart. But it was a godsend for two working people, especially after the kids came along. I cooked everything in it except pasta and bread. Well, and eggs. I never mastered microwaving scrambled eggs; they would get fluffy, but they'd get all 'splodey first. Anyway, eggs were still on the "foods that will kill you" list back then, so we didn't eat very many of them.

All through school, my kids got home-cooked meals nearly every night. It was quicker to microwave a meal on busy nights than to sit in the drive-thru line at McDonald's.

That original microwave is long gone, but I still have the cookbook that came with it -- and I still use it. The guidelines for how long to cook things like winter squash (poke holes in your squash, put it on a paper towel, cook on high for about 9 minutes or until squeezy soft) and corn on the cob (leave the ears in the husk, put on the turntable on a paper towel, cook on high for 3 to 4 minutes per ear) are still pretty accurate. I even cook meat in it (on a Pampered Chef stoneware pan).

(When I told an acquaintance that I cooked meat in the microwave, she cautioned me that I should be careful because meat needed to cook to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Farenheit. I told her that I'd been doing it for years, and we'd never gotten sick from undercooked meat. Kinda blew her mind.)

Anyway. The very first appliance I replaced in my kitchen here was the microwave. Some idiot had punched through the plastic cover over the clock/timer display, so I could never tell what time it was or how long stuff still had to cook. Air fryers were all the rage at the time, but I don't cook much breaded stuff (being low carb). And besides, I didn't have room for another small appliance. 

Then I discovered this guy. It's a combination microwave and convection oven. It does all the usual microwave stuff, plus it serves as a second oven and an air fryer. I don't use the air fryer mode much, but I've made pork tenderloin and frozen pizza in it, and they have come out great.

Now granted, I had to go to the manufacturer's website and download the actual manual. At first, I couldn't figure out how to change the cooking temperature to something other than high, but the manual explained it. I also learned how to use the defrost feature by time instead of weight, which I'd never figured out on the last few microwaves I've had. And the manual has been useful for using the convection features.

Anyway, I love this appliance. I use it every day. People who trash microwaves just don't know how to use them. Read the manual, for crying out loud.

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I should mention that virtually all microwaves are made in China by one company, although you probably knew that. (Feel free to bail at the five-minute mark on that video -- the rest is a commercial for the video maker's channel.)

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These moments of bloggy cooking advice have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're (still) registered to vote!